How Brooks Brothers is Building its Omni-channel World of Fashion

How Brooks Brothers is Building its Omni-channel World of Fashion

Leveraging SAP CRM and Customer Activity Repository (CAR)

For the 197 year old iconic fashion brand, staying relevant and exciting in a rapidly changing industry is a challenge that has been zealously embraced. A key strategic initiative of the brand is omni-channel excellence and the use of digital technology to get closer to its customers than ever before.

Fittingly described by Sahal Laher, CIO of Brooks Brothers, “If you’re our best customer in Tokyo and you come to our store on Madison Avenue, we need to know who you are.” (Source: Chain Store Age)

The Brooks Brothers’ vision was to create a 360 degree view of the customer; enabling the brand to know and respond to its customers in real-time with a highly personalized approach.

The Challenge of Serving the Omni-channel CustomerHow consumers interact with Brooks Brothers continues to evolve quickly. Not only are consumers changing how they shop across stores and online, the digital component itself is changing as consumers rapidly integrate smartphones and tablets into shopping.

The key to optimizing these brand experiences was connecting isolated functions to sustain a single customer conversation.

The solution is capable of processing large volumes of data from multiple customer touch-points including in-store, phone orders and ecommerce. Coupled with SAP CRM, this provides a true omni-channel view of their customers to Brooks Brothers.

Leveraging the new capabilities provided by SAP Customer Activity Repository (CAR), Brooks Brothers is reinventing its marketing, customer service and store operations by gaining:

One single view of the customer across all channels including feedback, purchase history, preferences and a record of all their interactions across the web, phone, retail stores and factory outlets.

Omni-channel visibility into transactions with instant access to view transactions done by a customers via any channels to resolve any issues that occur.

Consolidation of customer master records by combining and mapping multiple instances of the same customer across several retail systems.

By leveraging SAP Customer Activity Repository (CAR), fashion companies like Brooks Brothers can tap into its spectrum of features and enhance retail operations across marketing, merchandising, supply chain and channel teams. This integration eliminates “insight islands”, making it easier to incorporate insights at the point and place of decision.The following are some of the key areas SAP Customer Activity Repository helps fashion businesses:

Personalized Brand Experience, Pricing & PromotionsThrough the consolidation of customer interactions across a brand’s multiple channels as well as the social media sphere, fashion companies can make use of opportunities to convert the data they already have into useful insights that can drive exceptional personalization.

By bringing together customer, sales and inventory information from siloed applications, brands can benfits from instantaneous access to powerful consumer insights for better decision-making across sales, merchandising, marketing, logistics and the customer experience.

Inventory Intelligence across Channels and LocationsSAP Customer Activity Repository provides a snapshot of inventory and stock levels in real-time. This makes it easier to optimize business operations by assessing how much is left of each item at all of its store locations, eliminating the endless nightly inventory posting runs.

This way, if a customer calls to make a purchase at any given time, the sales associate can check inventory across all store locations and reserve stock to be shipped directly to the customer, or to the nearest store for in-store pickup. This functionality will be extended to online shopping, giving the customer the option to check stock of a nearby store and opt in for an in-store pickup.Tapping into a centralized inventory repository provides fashion brands a single, real-time version of stock-based truth to take action on opportunities that create the most profitable outcome – improving fill rates and reducing stock-outs.

Accurate Demand ForecastingBy leveraging advanced forecasting science within SAP Customer Activity Repository, brands will be able to make use of a unified forecast of all channels to better anticipate future demand. Taking into account price velocity, seasons and trends at lightning fast speeds, brands can try out different pricing, promotional and merchandising scenarios to most significantly impact future demand.

A price adjustment, a marketing change, or a new, targeted sales promotion can make a huge difference when implemented correctly. These types of small but relevant changes will help companies move closer to the ultimate omni-channel goal.

Extending predictions across the value chain will help brands improve vertical processes, ensuring key areas across the enterprise are working off one signal in order to reduce inventory, improve on-shelf availability and decrease lost sales.

How attune Can HelpAttune is uniquely positioned to help Fashion & Lifestyle brands leverage SAP technologies such as CRM and CAR. Drawing from years of experience in the Fashion and Lifestyle industry with an inside-view of the latest SAP Fashion and Retail platforms, attune’s capabilities helps brands market, sell and service customers around the world with a set of a solutions focused on omni-channel customer engagement.

Services we offer:

SAP CAR discovery and roadmap

CRM CAR implementation

Clienteling solution based on CAR capabilities

Reporting dashboards based on CAR intelligence

Attune’s customer engagement solutions based on SAP Customer Activity Repository empowers organizations to provide excellent customer experiences with a simplified approach to managing the modern customer journey – whether it’s how a marketer communicates with them or how a sales agent helps them.

OPPORTUNITY FOR PROOF OF CONCEPTLearn how SAP Customer Activity Repository can optimize your reporting, analytics and planning processes. attune’s Proof of Concept delivers a customized demonstration on how you can achieve a 360 degree view of customers, real-time inventory visibility and highly accurate forecasts.